noveldrama
Chapter 984 984 576 Im Not Targeting You
Chapter 984 984 576 Im Not Targeting You
?Chapter 984: Chapter 576 I’m Not Targeting You Chapter 984: Chapter 576 I’m Not Targeting You The Clippers’ owner Steve Ballmer quietly took care of another big matter.
Ever since Yu Fei transferred, there weren’t many professional matters that required the team owner’s attention, those that required Ballmer’s involvement were usually related to the need for financial allocation.
Ballmer was more than willing to act as the team’s “human ATM.” Even when the team didn’t need additional expenses, he always found ways to spend money.
Recently, Ballmer showed his talent in mathematics from his college days, keenly noticing the potential of SportVU camera technology. Although this technology had been around for a few years, due to the high costs of adoption, only a few teams had purchased it.
What is SportVU actually for? Simply put, it can accurately track the movement of every object on the court— including players, referees, and the basketball—second by second, providing a new means of analyzing games. It’s very helpful for checking player status, observing performance in games, and compiling stats for reacting to different situations.
Additionally, this technology has some extra features, such as helping track player workload, real-time monitoring of players’ running speeds, number of accelerations, whether they have reached top speed, and the jumping height during a jump shot, among others.
It can be said, a new era full of data analysis is coming.
Ballmer also spared no expense in other areas, which Yu Fei experienced deeply. In Seattle, Bennett was absolutely unwilling to spend an extra million US Dollars annually to enhance the team’s soft power. Yet, at the Clippers, a team that was not looked upon favorably by the outside world, was already equipped with the most advanced video systems, and during training, they had sleep and heart rate monitors, GPS devices, and accelerometers to help players monitor their training status at all times. In addition, details of daily life such as strength training, diet, etc., were also strictly tracked. Eventually, all the data was compiled together, and the team could fully understand the players’ physical conditions and changes throughout the season.
Just like the best armies go all out to equip their soldiers, the top sports teams spare no effort in taking care of every detail of their players.
Doc Rivers was deeply moved. In Boston, although he had the prestige of a great coach and didn’t have to act according to the whims of the GOAT as he did in Los Angeles, Los Angeles was after all a different world — a paradise for the wealthy, a city with far more entertainment options than Boston, along with a financially powerful owner.
When Rivers first learned about the SportVU system, he wished to introduce it to the practice court. However, he was told that this was an extra project requiring an additional 200,000 US Dollars. Rivers approached Ballmer for approval, and Ballmer approved without hesitation. Rivers was ecstatically happy— with this system, he could visually analyze through video who was more diligent in training and who was slacking off.
Before media day arrived, the Clippers used SportVU for the first time during a game review. For Rivers, this was simply a treasure. He used this technology to vividly educate the repeatedly erring Antetokounmpo during training, “Look at your position, Giannis, you must learn to find the right spot!”
However, Yu Fei noticed that Rivers was more reliant on the surface phenomena presented by the system for his coaching, rather than deeply utilizing the data to guide the direction of player development. Data doesn’t explain everything; otherwise, players like Kobe, who had less favorable high-level data, would not be recognized.
But whether data is useful ultimately depends on how it is applied.
For instance, this summer the Houston Rockets also introduced the SportVU system and signed Carlos Delfino. It was the SportVU camera data that revealed his exceptionally high rebounding rate, which is a nice additional skill for a perimeter shooter.
The deeper implications of the tactical revolution and position changes brought about by space basketball are that the ‘Moneyball’ theory, which values a 33.3% three-point shooting percentage over a 50% mid-range shot percentage, has been recognized by the professionals.
This is just a part of space basketball’s visual data.
With the introduction of various advanced technologies, more and more high-end data that laypeople cannot understand will become proprietary to the major teams, and only coaching teams that properly utilize them can get closer to victory.
This requires the recruitment of a large number of analysts behind the scenes for intense data analysis.
Unfortunately, this was another shortcoming for Rivers.
In his opinion, all that was intangible; fundamentally, he was a basketball purist, unconcerned with the fancy data.
Yet sometimes data can speak more easily than the evidence of one’s own eyes in video footage.
Yu Fei believed that he definitely couldn’t rely on Rivers to create an exclusive database within the Clippers.
So, when the meeting adjourned, he called over the general manager, Arne Trem.
Trem had long gotten used to the fact that the team’s highest authority was in the hands of a player not holding any official position.
When Yu Fei proposed to him to create an exclusive team database, he sensed the significance of the issue.
“Database…” Trem asked cautiously, “How large of a scale?”
“First, we need to establish a database containing all teams across the league,” Yu Fei said, “In the future, we can consider expanding it to include the NCAA.”
Trem started to get nervous: “This might require a dozen… no, perhaps dozens of professionals…”
And worse, in the short term, it was unlikely to be effective.
“If we have all these advanced systems but fail to produce some exclusive data that can be permanently retained, then we’re wasting Mr. Ballmer’s money,” Yu Fei smiled, “I believe Mr. Ballmer would not object.”